Busy Summers day in world air traffic control

[On the beach]

The yellow dots are airplanes in the sky during a 24 hour period.

Stay with the picture. You will see the light of the day moving from the east to the west, as the Earth spins on its axis.

Also you will see the flow of traffic leaving the North American continent and travelling at night to arrive in the UK in the morning. Then you will see the flow changing, leaving the UK in the morning and flying to the American continent in daylight.

It is a 24 hour observation of all of the large aircraft flights in the world, condensed down to about 2 minutes. You can tell it was summer time in the north by the sun's footprint over the planet. You can see that it didn't quite set in the extreme north and it didn't quite rise in the extreme south.

YouTube - World Air Traffic 24 Hour Period (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1US_4uf4YE)

On the beach :eek:

[On the beach]

Is this done to help reduce passenger jetlag?

I'd love to say yes, but it is more to do with when a certain British airport opens for business in the morning and a significant proportion of the worlds airline schedules revolve around this one airports opening hours.

On the beach

[Minesthechevy]

Awesome bit of film.

My own recollection of the ebb and flow of NA traffic is that it takes advantage of the prevailing upper winds, westbound tracks were usually more northerly than the eastbound ones.


but Ive been out to pasture for a while now, I could be wrong.....

[neroliie]

Thank you for sharing :ok: :D

[jackieofalltrades]

My own recollection of the ebb and flow of NA traffic is that it takes advantage of the prevailing upper winds, westbound tracks were usually more northerly than the eastbound ones.

Whilst this is not the 'set in stone rule', it does tend to be that the westbound tracks are more northerly in general.

[phantomlurker]

Surely by definition, it can't be a summer's day if it's a global view...:}

[/pedant]